Tag Archives: Sundance Film Festival

“Madcap comedy” is the only phrase that really describes the absolute ridiculousness that is Julie Delpy’s 2 Days In New York. There really isn’t any other term that fits–the experience is akin to watching a circus unfold in your living room, which I assume is the point. Julie Delpy is Marion, a deeply eccentric Parisian-born artist based in New York who is trying to juggle the demands of a new and blended family with her art. When her French family is flying in to support her solo exhibition, her tranquil relationship with her radio host blipster husband Mingus (Chris Rock) is put to the test. Over 48 hours, the entire household is thrown into chaos.

A few things that happen in the film: a violation of sexual boundaries involving an electric toothbrush, wanton keying of limousines, smelly situations at customs, a French nudist captivates a bored American doctor, the children decide they want to be a dead princess and a dead bunny for Halloween, stoned shenanigans in the co-op elevator, and Marion sells her soul, which results in a minor brawl.

And did I mention a cardboard cutout of Barack Obama is a major character?

Delpy, who wrote and directed the film, makes the most out of the short screentime cramming in as much commentary on family life and the art world as she possibly can. A follow-up to2 Days in Paris, Delpy balances the pace of her city subjects with the quiet calamity of modern life. The film spins so fast that in the middle of the madness, it takes more than half of the movie before I realize 2 Days in New York has managed to pull off an amazing depiction on an interracial relationship. Race is not the most important thing between Marion and Mingus, and it certainly isn’t their primary conflict throughout the film. Instead, where race intersects with their lives is subtle.

If race is blatantly brought up as part of the plot, it is often played for cringe-inducing laughs. Manu, Marion’s former flame who is currently dating her sister Rose, is a one-stop shop for racial ignorance posing as innocence. He tries to curry favor with Mingus’ sister Elizabeth (Malinda Williams) by saying she looks “just like Beyonce, only sexier.” Chagrined at finding out that Mingus doesn’t smoke weed, he off-handley remarks that Marion “found the only black guy in New York that doesn’t smoke.” And when Mingus’ friend from the Obama Administration comes to town, Mingus is mortified when Manu starts randomly calling him “Kumar.” (This friend was not played by Kal Penn.) Luckily, after a day or so, Manu is deported for lighting up in front of a police station.

2 Days in New York is a fun romp, with a strange, but satisfying ending that proves that love (mostly) conquers all.

An Oversimplification of Her Beauty defies categorization, in all the best ways possible.

The first thing to know is that the film isn’t a linear story. It’s a complex and complicated exploration of modern love, an intriguing dance between two characters circling the possibility of a relationship, born out of mutual infatuation. Avant-guarde storytelling in the key of noir, Oversimplification blends animation, live action, and narration to tell the tale of Terence falling in love with Namik. The characters are real people, based on their own lives. Nance earned his spot in the New Frontier section of Sundance – in addition to the innovative, movie-within-a-movie style of storytelling, animation also plays a key role. Exploring his inner emotions through stop-motion figure dolls and beautifully rendered scenes, Nance essentially uses this film as therapy, working out the complicated tangle of his messy romantic life.

Refreshingly, black women are Nance’s muses. Often in cinematic depictions of black love, the relationship is construed as adversarial. Here, as Nance documents the many loves that fit his archetype of “brown, maternal, well read, well traveled,” black women take center stage, his love for each of them palpable through the screen.

But is what he feels for them really love? Nance believes so, and spends most of the film trying to articulate what he loves about Namik, and how his past relationship history lead him to this point of nearly breathless anticipation. The film is ripe with themes for exploration but I will have to leave most of those paths untouched. Nance has created a work so complex, it is almost like recorded performance art. Thus, I agree with Tambay – it needs to be experienced. Hopefully, it finds a distributor because it deserves to be seen and experienced by as many people as possible. Nance’s story is both familiar and strange, and tends to provoke a lot of self-reflection in the audience. Who are we, when we are in love? I’m still mulling over my own answer.

Walking in, I thought I had Filly Brown pegged. The trailer gave me the impression it was like every other hip-hop movie I’d ever seen:

Young kid from the hood trying to make good? Check.

Prerequisite positive rap song that feels like it was pulled from Ghostwriter? Check.

Street pressures that are easily overcome? Check.

Mandatory plot for women, involving sexing up your image to get signed to the majors? Check.

But hey, I had just gone through three really depressing movies about the fall out of the drug war. I needed something to lift my spirits, and I will shamelessly admit that I enjoyed Brown Sugar. On the real, Filly Brown could have been a Lifetime produced version of the Somaya Reece story, and I still would have watched it!

Luckily, I was wrong.

Okay, on second thought, I wasn’t that wrong. Two and a half of the four I listed above were in the movie. But the team behind Filly Brown managed to add enough new elements to make the standard tropes feel fresh. Continue reading →

So the fact that Rashida Jones nailed both her performance and her part of the screenplay entire movie is something very special.

Celeste and Jesse Forever follows a long-term couple in the midst of a breakup. Having been best friends for the past twenty years, Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Andy Samberg) find themselves divorcing–in spite of their continued chemistry. Celeste, a trends analyst and pop-culture commentator, is the epitome of a responsible business woman. Jesse is an unemployed artist, who spends more time scheming on surfing than actively planning out his life. They bond through some strange shared loves (like masturbating lip glosses, baby corn, and other things that look like tiny penises) but Celeste initiates the divorce since Jesse has failed to grow up. Continue reading →

Latoya will have more Sundance Film Festival coverage over the course of the week, but we’d be remiss in not extending congratulations to Ava DuVernay on winning the festival’s Best Director award this past Saturday for her second feature, Middle of Nowhere.

DuVernay made a well-received debut last year with I Will Follow, which she wrote and directed.

Nowhere, which DuVernay also wrote and directed, stars Emayatzy Corinealdias (Akira’s Hip-Hop Shop) a woman trying to keep herself up in the wake of her husband (Omari Hardwick) going to jail, with the emphasis on her own struggles in the outside world, rather than her husband’s jail time.

“It touches the prison wife’s tale,” DuVernay told It’sOnTheGrid’s Jason Scoggins “But really it’s a story about a woman who’s living within a relationship that’s imbalanced, which is something that a lot of women – and a lot of people – know a lot about.”

Like her last film, Nowherewas picked up for distribution by Participant Media and AFFRM (African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement), which DuVernay founded to help African-American independent films get increased limited engagements, so her latest effort should be hitting some more film festivals later this year.

We’ve posted DuVernay’s chat with Scoggins, in which she talks about making Nowhere without telling her clients at her other job (she worked as a publicist before becoming a filmmaker), among other subjects, under the cut.Continue reading →

We got to do our do, not separate, together Got to move on through, not separate, together Got to do our do, not separate, together Got to move on through, not separate, together - A Tribe Called Quest, “Separate/Together,” 1996

Going by the trailer to an upcoming documentary, A Tribe Called Quest’s reunion earlier this decade put those lyrics to the test.

Directed by actor Michael Rapaport, Beats, Rhymes & Life will include not only performance footage and interviews with members Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Jarobi White and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, but it looks like we’ll get to see how a feud between Phife and Q-Tip threatened to implode the group even as it returned to prominence.

“Is A Tribe Called Quest gonna make more music?” Rapaport asks Ali at one point. Ali’s response: “You got the answer to that question?”

Click here for a list of theatres that will show the film after it opens in July. The trailer, courtesy of Yahoo and Slashfilm, is under the cut.Continue reading →

Race, Culture, and Identity in a Colorstruck World

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Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture. Check out our daily updates on the latest celebrity gaffes, our no-holds-barred critique of questionable media representations, and of course, the inevitable Keanu Reeves John Cho newsflashes.

Latoya Peterson (DC) is the Owner and Editor (not the Founder!) of Racialicious, Arturo García (San Diego) is the Managing Editor, Andrea Plaid (NYC) is the Associate Editor. You can email us at team@racialicious.com.